Character Competitive Impressions

[Nu~]

Chef_Pac on twitter said that he dropped Pac-Man for pit and other characters. #Thestruggle
Sorry about my post about Seagull. Wasn't really thinking when I made that post

Stop lying

 

[Antonykun]

I have nightmares of Ikes tempest. I'm tossing and turning screaming "diddy save us" to no avail as the monkey gets blown away in the fury of super wind box. Then Ike turns around after his bloodless destruction of monkey and turns to my Shulk yelling "Should've played Kirby son".

Am I mad for thinking Tempest is one of the silliest moves in this game?

You're just too accustomed to 4 generations of Rest.

 

[Nu~]

Chef_Pac on twitter said that he dropped Pac-Man for pit and other characters. #Thestruggle
Sorry about my post about Seagull. Wasn't really thinking when I made that post. Check his twitter. 100% sure I saw him post something like that

He said nothing like that.

 

[Superbat]

Dam. Let me just shut up then.

 

[san.]

I have nightmares of Ikes tempest. I'm tossing and turning screaming "diddy save us" to no avail as the monkey gets blown away in the fury of super wind box. Then Ike turns around after his bloodless destruction of monkey and turns to my Shulk yelling "Should've played Kirby son".

Am I mad for thinking Tempest is one of the silliest moves in this game?

You either get Tempest or you get this:

The saving grace is that these moves aren't usable onstage that easily, or for punishing landings, you sacrifice easier punishes for the more trickier option. Tempest scales with rage and imo doesn't truly become great until Ike is above 80-90%. Non-rage tempest is a little weak and requires extra work to edgeguard.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Seriously this topic has been done to death now, we get it. players are salty. We should actually talk about counter strategies rather than moan about other moaning. If we want people to start implementing counter strats, please lets make some dang it.

In case of Skull Bash there's no simple answer if you're facing Esams Pikachu, the man will get you flustered without skullbash, and being able to get someone flustered means being to land skullbash on them, pretty much all other Pikachus would struggle to land it reliably the way Esam did, but since Esam is able to put so much pressure on he can trigger the responses he needs to land it, that and he is good at making reads ofc. To avoid getting hit by skullbash one would first need to master the Pika matchup and the only way to do that is to play Esam lol.

 

[DavemanCozy]

I honestly can't wait for the day customs become the standard. I won a fairly sizeable local tourney yesterday (still surprised we got so many people for a local: http://goes.challonge.com/SSB4_WiiU_03) using Diddy Kong and taking out @ DavemanCozy along the way (he got me in Winners' though). I'm glad I made the switch because Diddy is really fun and taking me places but honestly it took 3 weeks for me to learn the character well enough to dethrone the guy who had been winning all of our tournaments for months.

Like, 3 locals. Didn't take much huh?

Aside from Frupcakes KO punching me 3 times in Winners Finals (that's some real salt right there), I'm happy that more and more people are challenging me now.

We're still pretty free compared to Ontario and Montreal, let alone Michigan on the south. We've got work to do.

 

[S_B]

In case of Skull Bash there's no simple answer if you're facing Esams Pikachu, the man will get you flustered without skullbash, and being able to get someone flustered means being to land skullbash on them, pretty much all other Pikachus would struggle to land it reliably the way Esam did, but since Esam is able to put so much pressure on he can trigger the responses he needs to land it, that and he is good at making reads ofc. To avoid getting hit by skullbash one would first need to master the Pika matchup and the only way to do that is to play Esam lol.

What's ESAM's hourly rate, then? Does he travel freight?

Sure, you COULD play him online, but like, lag and stuff...

 

[thehard]

http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/301f76/my_opinion_on_custom_moves_after_ktar_xii/ Jtails made a solid statement today. He also talks about ESAM's Pika.

 

[NairWizard]

Source? All I can find is a joke tweet chain between him and aMSa.

This is what I was referring to. It seems to be less like a joke and more like both are considering using other characters instead of their customs-off mains.

Of course, they may still return to those mains after tourney experience suggests that they should, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Abadango use Pacman and aMSa use Greninja, but it's clear to me that the Japanese players are viewing customs-on as a different game, worth using different mains in.

 

[Locke 06]

whatever floats your boat buddy. if ya don't want to talk about your impressions of character specific match ups here no ones forcing you.

It's not just MU's. I'm getting the impression that instead of a character flavor of the month in this thread, it's the custom flavor of the day. And then everyone discusses how to beat that one custom strategy with their character here, and then more debates on if that strategy actually works. However, very few people actually have extended experience against the custom. It's even more theorycraft in this thread than usual and unfocused as nobody cares how Mii Swordfighter beats the Villager EBT ledge stalling strategy except for Swordfighter mains.

While I don't need to talk about how Mega deals with Avatar Kong here unless people are actually interested, the fact that this somewhat insightful thread is stuck on such an unproductive topic is rather lame, although not unexpected. I'd rather read pages about something people actually have experience with, like Diddy and who his best MU's are. But that's just me.

 

[Lavani]

I have nightmares of Ikes tempest. I'm tossing and turning screaming "diddy save us" to no avail as the monkey gets blown away in the fury of super wind box. Then Ike turns around after his bloodless destruction of monkey and turns to my Shulk yelling "Should've played Kirby son".

Am I mad for thinking Tempest is one of the silliest moves in this game?

To be fair, we should've seen this coming years ago. He even warned us.

In seriousness however, I haven't actually seen custom Ike in a tournament setting yet. I know what his customs can do for him on paper, but have they gotten results yet?

 

[S_B]

In seriousness however, I haven't actually seen custom Ike in a tournament setting yet. I know what his customs can do for him on paper, but have they gotten results yet?

I'm anxiously awaiting custom Ike, Bowser, Marth and a number of others to see how they fare...

 

[ChronoPenguin]

You either get Tempest or you get this:

It's a damn considerable option though and the windbox is seemingly lingering where as Furious doesn't. I don't feel like Furious gives you good reward on the edge unless its properly charged, where as Tempest wind-box by its very nature can be fruitful with even a smaller gust, not that it takes long to get a decent push-back for weaker recoveries. I already found Ike to be a respectable MU against Shulk, and its a pretty fun fight on default. Outside of Power visions Shulk doesn't have any 'crazy' customs, he has multiple viable ones but they're primarily flavor. Granted Power vision is highly rewarding but I don't feel it "changes" a MU anymore then regular Vision which already hits hard by default standards. Meanwhile Ike comes in with tempest and close combat and you have to go actually adapt to that. No one has to adapt to power vision anymore then they have to adapt to regular vision just know that it kills earlier. Shulk probably has some of the least earthbreaking customs.

Not to say Tempest skews the matchup, but Ike and custom Ike is really worth respecting on multiple fronts from a Shulk perspective.

 

[NairWizard]

Theorycraft should always be validated by experience, that's true, but I think that it's worth having the discussions here regardless. Personally, I want to know what other people are doing with their mains to beat the new strategies that not everyone has faced. That's how knowledge spreads and the metagame evolves.

I've already faced this strategy in tournament and friendlies, and found that it was easy to get around with my characters, but that may not be everyone's experience. Communicating counter-strategies to other players is important so that no one gets janked out due to lack of knowledge. Now that we've had so much discussion about Trip Sapling, I think we're all much more prepared to deal with it in tournament than we might otherwise have been. That's a good thing; that, to me, is the purpose of this thread.

To that end, I'd actually be curious to hear the opinion of @Thinkaman on all of this (Heavy Skull Bash, Trip Sapling, other customs), since he has much customs experience and has probably seen some clever counterstrategies employed.

 

[Ffamran]

Why does aMSa think that Greninja stays the same with custom moves on? Shifting Shuriken is an amazing move and Greninja gets a better combo game and a scary kill-confirm and really doesn't lose that much in return. Someone tell aMSa to use it.

I think aMSa meant Greninja's play style doesn't change as much. So, take Palutena or Falco for example. Normally, they're more like punishers, but with customs they can be more aggressive whether or not they're good at it - Palutena is probably a better rushdown aggressor than Falco is with customs - or Fox who with Impact Blaster can sort of pull a 64 Fox, Melee Falco, or Brawl Wolf for zoning instead of chipping extra damage with his default Blaster. I don't know Greninja much, but I think Greninja stays similarly with customs as a setup, ambush, trickster character.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

It's not just MU's. I'm getting the impression that instead of a character flavor of the month in this thread, it's the custom flavor of the day. And then everyone discusses how to beat that one custom strategy with their character here, and then more debates on if that strategy actually works. However, very few people actually have extended experience against the custom. It's even more theorycraft in this thread than usual and unfocused as nobody cares how Mii Swordfighter beats the Villager EBT ledge stalling strategy except for Swordfighter mains.

While I don't need to talk about how Mega deals with Avatar Kong here unless people are actually interested, the fact that this somewhat insightful thread is stuck on such an unproductive topic is rather lame, although not unexpected. I'd rather read pages about something people actually have experience with, like Diddy and who his best MU's are. But that's just me.

Thats all fine and dandy i always like to talk about other characters. so yeah shoot up how megaman deals with dk please. I care about almost any MU friend i try not to theory craft as much as possible and generally state when I am.

I lab alot.

 

[Conda]

Character forums are a thing, they could use the added activity and the users within tend to be very knowledgeable about their character.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Too bad people don't know what to discuss in their respective character boards and even if they have a topic they wanna keep discussing it here or other random topics.

 

[NairWizard]

Keep in mind that discussing something here is inherently different from discussing it on a character forum, both because of the direction of this thread and the variety of perspectives that meet here.

Given a topic of discussion T (whether T be Diddy or customs Villager or whatever else), the question posed by this thread is: "what can the metagame as a whole do against T?" which breaks down into the following types of subquestions: "What characters are good against T? What kinds of tools are needed to beat T? Who here has had experience against T in his/her region?"

On the Pikachu forum (or any other character forum) the question posed is "What can Pikachu do against T?" and this breaks down differently, into questions like: "What stages do I ban against T? What custom set should I use against T? At what percents do my combos work against T?"

The answers are more character-specific, and less useful for understanding the state of the metagame.

Not that I mind dropping this discussion. If we have to change the subject, though, I vote that we talk more about Sonic, Sheik, and Rosalina--all characters who are already very good but seem to get even better with customs. Or perhaps Mii Brawler. What do we think of him after KTAR? There hasn't been a lot of discussion on what we saw from Dapuffster.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Keep in mind that discussing something here is inherently different from discussing it on a character forum, both because of the direction of this thread and the variety of perspectives that meet here.

Given a topic of discussion T (whether T be Diddy or customs Villager or whatever else), the question posed by this thread is: "what can the metagame as a whole do against T?" which breaks down into the following types of subquestions: "What characters are good against T? What kinds of tools are needed to beat T? Who here has had experience against T in his/her region?"

On the Pikachu forum (or any other character forum) the question posed is "What can Pikachu do against T?" and this breaks down differently, into questions like: "What stages do I ban against T? What custom set should I use against T? At what percents do my combos work against T?"

The answers are more character-specific, and less useful for understanding the state of the metagame.

Not that I mind dropping this discussion. If we have to change the subject, though, I vote that we talk more about Sonic, Sheik, and Rosalina--all characters who are already very good but seem to get even better with customs. Or perhaps Mii Brawler. What do we think of him after KTAR? There hasn't been a lot of discussion on what we saw from Dapuffster.

On the topic of sonic, how does hammer spin dash react against naryus love?

 

[Hippieslayer]

on character forums people refer to for glory constantly, even when they dont refer to it explicitly you can tell that whatever they are saying is the result of their for glory experiences, not everyone does that, but a whole lot of people do, which means theres a bunch of fluff you have to wade through

 

[Espy Rose]

It probably still loses.

 

[HeroMystic]

on character forums people refer to for glory constantly, even when they dont refer to it explicitly you can tell that whatever they are saying is the result of their for glory experiences, not everyone does that, but a whole lot of people do, which means theres a bunch of fluff you have to wade through

Q&A Threads and persistent moderation solves that.

The problem is high level players stick to twitter, facebook, or twitch nowadays.

 

[Dabuz]

Mii brawler is kind of top tier until the opponent stops getting caught by dthrow -> up-b at the ledge and acknowledges he has absolute garbage kill options and nothing to kill or set up kills off a throw, then he falls to being just above average.

Edit: Was responding to solidsense

 

[Conda]

Q&A Threads and persistent moderation solves that.

The problem is high level players stick to twitter, facebook, or twitch nowadays.

Yeah smashboads would be a different place if more of the tournament playerbase participated.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Yeah smashboads would be a different place if more of the tournament playerbase participated.

i thought many tourny go-ers are in this thead. unless you mean top level well known players of course.

 

[NairWizard]

Mii brawler is kind of top tier until the opponent stops getting caught by dthrow -> up-b at the ledge and acknowledges he has absolute garbage kill options and nothing to kill or set up kills off a throw, then he falls to being just above average.

Edit: Was responding to solidsense

What do you think makes Mii Brawler different from, say, Mario or Pikachu in this regard? (they rely on up-smash reads to KO, though tbh you can throw out up-smash and have it connect much of the time). As I recall, you ranked both fairly highly, though they suffer from the same issue of KO confirms against cautious players.

--

Also, yes, many high-level players avoid smashboards. ZeRo was asked on stream the other day (I only caught a bit of this, as I don't usually watch his stream, so forgive me if I cut something out) if smashboards is a good place for new players to start, and he said "no, stick to facebook, twitch, and reddit." Smashboards is obsolete in the eyes of (some of) the top level. Nothing new.

 

[Superbat]

Lol when I used Tempest Ike I was in training mode I thought it was weak af. (I think it has to be regular matches for rage to work. On normal matches tho rage Ike with tempest is Thanks @ san. for showing me the light.

 

[Ffamran]

Ganondorf and Captain Falcon with the disjoints, yo.

@ Ffamran
Randomly remembered you asking about Dark Fists' disjoint forever ago. Here, have this:

 

[Jigglymaster]

At low percents Mii brawler is top tier. He has high damaging combos and a kill throw that will finish you off at the edge of the stage early if you're not careful. However, once you get past 70%, he absolutely struggles to kill you. All of his smash attacks are incredibly slow, not reliable like Fox or Mario's Up-smash. F-smash only hits on frame 17.

Onslaught, Helicopter Kick, and Ultimate Uppercut are his only options, none of which can be combo'd into at this point. Onslaught is terrible on shield and anybody can get a free smash attack to punish it. Helicopter Kick can still be done OoS, but it generally won't kill until 120% if done center stage and its not too hard to bait out. His grabs and air attacks will never kill you so you really don't have much to fear by just holding shield against him at high percents.

Play smart, don't put your back to the ledge against Brawler, you know he wants to grab you there so just don't. In the middle of the stage he has to find a way to get you to the ledge, as that's where he wants you most. Feint jump has almost no invincibility either and I have not seen many players take advantage of intercepting it.

All in all, Mii Brawler as of right now is top 5 material, but I could see him dropping if more people are willing to learn how to fight him properly. Regardless, I will keep on maining him as he is just right for me.

 

[Pyr]

Ganondorf and Captain Falcon with the disjoints, yo.

Is that exclusive to (what looks like) Up-B2, or is that range present on Up-B1 as well?

 

[Lavani]

Is that exclusive to (what looks like) Up-B2, or is that range present on Up-B1 as well?

They both have that range.

 

[Esquire]

Mii brawler is kind of top tier until the opponent stops getting caught by dthrow -> up-b at the ledge and acknowledges he has absolute garbage kill options and nothing to kill or set up kills off a throw, then he falls to being just above average.

Edit: Was responding to solidsense

Eh...

Well, first off, "stop getting caught by dthrow -> up-b at the ledge" is harder than it looks. Kind of like saying "stop getting caught by Diddy's DThrow". Except without bananas and with a guaranteed NAir conversion. Oh, plus one of the best mobility characters in the game, if not the best. (Assuming this is Short/Thin or even Short/Fat here, as if not, hard to take Brawler discussion seriously otherwise.)

He doesn't have the issue of "having garbage kill options". He actually just lacks safe ones. Only DSmash is pretty safe to throw out, his DAir and BAir are the only aerials with kill potential (albeit they aren't even that strong unless offstage), and his specials are punishable or short in range. He has no issues with strong kill moves, though. He's just limited in number there and has to space them very close to his opponent. He's no Captain Falcon, sure. But FSmash, USmash (somewhat), DSmash (back hit), Helicopter Kick, Ultimate Uppercut, and Onslaught have plenty of power and can kill at relatively early percentages. And they aren't hard to hit with. You just need to make sure that you're going to hit with them, so patient usage of certain moves is a must (outside of combo KO's).

Not sure what you meant by "nothing to kill or set up kills off a throw". If you meant that there's no options after a throw...DThrow wants a word with you. If you mean there's no combo opportunities besides DThrow, that's not true either. DTilt, for example, leads to similar true combos as DThrow. UAir, like Captain Falcon's UAir, can pop standing opponents up into various other aerial strings or straight into a Helicopter Kick. Heck, even Dash can combo into attacks on bigger characters. UTilt can also combo into itself and other aerials. Plus, you have jab mix-ups with Jab -> Jab -> Throw or Jab -> Jab -> Ultimate Uppercut that either lead to combos or punish characters trying to escape the grab.

Does Mii Brawler have shortcomings? Yeah, reach and lack of safe kill options. Reach especially is an issue. But will that stop Mii Brawler from being, at the least, Top 10? Nah, I personally don't think so. Let his metagame develop, and I think you'll see players use this character properly.

EDIT: Got beaten to the punch, but points still stand!

 

[Conda]

i thought many tourny go-ers are in this thead. unless you mean top level well known players of course.

I meant just more tournament players in general, not necessarily the top players.

Not everyone is the forum-poster type. Some people prefer posting an essay on reddit sometimes, or twitter spitballing, or conversing with viewers on twitch. We have to draw from these sources in order to improve the breadth of discussion here, and not keep things so insular (and cyclical as a result).

This is a great clubhouse with a lot of smart and logically-driven people in it, but it's true that not everyone uses this site (an understatement) and especially not this thread, so it's important to respect and include other players when we are able. For example, if someone quotes Nairo or Dabuz from a non-smashboards source, tag them! That way, they can have a chance to potentially clear things up, add more detail, and so forth.

The amount of times people rag on players whom aren't regular smashboards posters, just for something they said, isn't cool. Not tagging them when we can makes it clear we don't treat them the way we treat regular posters here, which ain't cool either. For example, people are hard on M2K - if he was a poster here who posted frequently, I'm sure we'd understand his discussion points better as well as his perspectives. But with twitter quotes, twitch utterings, and similar sources being linked here - we're constantly left with context-less and simplified statements to discuss.

Also, not every high-level player is outspoken enough to speak in length on forums the way many of us here do. This can be seen when you watch streams. If I was streaming and was asked about Peach, I'd go on and on (anyone who watches my youtube channel knows this). But some players utter "She's good, hard though" and continue playing. They may just not be the rambly in-depth dorksters we are. And that's fine.

 

[Dabuz]

Snip

Dapuffster said it better, I do think brawler is being highly overrated, somewhere in the 15-20 region just because landing a kill with him is hard when someone is familiar with the character, he has the yoshi syndrome in that respect where he is good at getting the % lead but then gets screwed over by the opponent having rage + better kill options.

 

[Sinister Slush]

I take solace in the fact people are slowly leaning towards Yoshi not actually being top 5. Just took almost 6 months of losing videos 90% of the time and next to zero 1st placings to finally say "maybe he really isn't that good?"

 

[Road Death Wheel]

I take solace in the fact people are slowly leaning towards Yoshi not actually being top 5. Just took almost 6 months of losing videos 90% of the time and next to zero 1st placings to finally say "maybe he really isn't that good?"

it took no results for me to believe he was not top 10 .....

 

[Jigglymaster]

Dapuffster said it better, I do think brawler is being highly overrated, somewhere in the 15-20 region just because landing a kill with him is hard when someone is familiar with the character, he has the yoshi syndrome in that respect where he is good at getting the % lead but then gets screwed over by the opponent having rage + better kill options.

I think my matches against ADHD's Diddy and Jtails' Diddy at KTAR is a good example of a person who doesn't know how to fight Mii Brawler compared to somebody who does. No offense to ADHD, he's just never fought Brawler in a 1v1 before. Jtails has.

 

[Sinister Slush]

it took no results for me to believe he was not top 10 .....

He has results, just nothing breathtaking. People too lazy to click onto character boards another thing for no discussion over there too, which also makes them miss info that's right in front of their faces if all they did was make a couple of simple clicks over just leddit twitz and bookface